6 Video Game Endings That Are Clearly F#@%ing With Us

#3. Mortal Kombat 4 Just Stops Giving a Fuck

If you don't know what Mortal Kombat is, we can never be friends. Not even on a "let's just compare genital tattoos" level. This game not only is one of the forefathers of the entire fighting game genre; it revolutionized graphics and the use of gore, and pretty much caused the creation of the ESRB (that little parental ratings box that almost everyone ignores) because of its famous "fatality" ending moves.

Oh, come on, that's just a severed head with his spine hanging down from it. Pussies.

The WTF Ending

Just like in Tekken, the characters have their own stories and their own endings. In the case of one named Jax, that story was pretty simple. He was a cop, partnered with another cop/fighter named Sonya, and they were investigating the case of "Who Gives a Shit -- Just Kick Motherfuckers." At one point, it's presumed that Jax is dead, and Jarek -- the man they were after -- confronts Sonya (keep in mind, this is totally Jax's ending):

It's hard to put into words just how bad that acting is. But if I had to compare it to something in the real world, it would be when a little kid is playing with action figures, and he just starts slapping them together, making up his own little script as he goes along, changing his voice ever so slightly to differentiate between the two characters that he's created. I'm positive that's exactly what's going on in that cut scene.

It starts out with Sonya and the bad guy talking shit to each other. Then the bad guy decides to lunge at her while she's clearly standing at the edge of a cliff -- seriously, even if he connected, he would still be so fucked. But even stranger, as pretty much anyone who's ever seen this ending will attest to, Jarek clearly screams, "I'M SO GAAAAAAAY" as he falls to his apparent death.

"I'M SO GAAAAAAAAY!"

I say "apparent death" because seconds later, he appears out of nowhere and pulls Sonya over the edge, killing her. Evidently he just faked the sound of his voice trailing off into the depths, echo and all. Then he stomps on her radio and lets out the single stupidest, creepiest, most bizarre laugh I have ever heard in any format as long as I have been alive. If you don't watch any other part of this video, at least skip up to the 38-second mark and listen to it. And remember while you're listening, someone got paid to do that. And a director listened to it and said, "Yes, this is exactly what we need. Perfect."

Finally, over halfway through his ending, Jax shows up and grabs Jarek (or "Chad Laughstupid," as I call him) by the throat and hangs him over the edge of the cliff. What follows is one of the stupidest exchanges I can remember in a video game. Jarek pleads for his life, demanding that Jax has to arrest him and uphold the law -- because he apparently forgot about the dozen people that Jax just killed for sport in an illegal fighting tournament. He says, "You have to arrest me! Wait, wait! This is brutality!" To which Jax responds, "Wrong, Jarek. This is not a brutality. This is a fatality!"

And then Jax drops Jarek to his death onto a SimCity map.

#2. Dynasty Warriors 5 Turns a Legendary General into an Effeminate Dancer

Dynasty Warriors 5 is based on a 14th century historical novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is considered to be one of the greatest books to ever come out of China. Now obviously, a video game isn't going to live up to an 800,000-word novel that contains literally a thousand characters, but it does what it can. And even if you don't know anything about the book, at it's core the game is you beating the shit out of hundreds and hundreds of punching-bag soldiers. And really, that's all you can ask for in a good game.

The WTF Ending

Then that happened.

The guy in the extremely feminine purple outfit with the flamboyant pink-and-gold feathery weapons is supposed to be legendary Chinese general Zhang He. If you want to read up about the actual man, feel free, but I'm going to just pretend that the depiction in the video is spot-on.

"Has anyone seen my Madonna CDs?"

Everything about him is just so goddamn fun to watch. I keep imagining the director getting a call at like 9 a.m. from a crew supervisor, saying, "Sir, the motion capture model for Zhang He quit. I've got a backup, but full disclosure, she's a stripper I met the other night at a buddy's bachelor party." And at that point, he just didn't give a shit. He hadn't had his coffee or his morning cigarette yet. He was still coming off of a wicked Everclear drunk from the night before. "It couldn't be that bad," he'd think to himself.

Oh, it could. It so could.

So after all the brutality and cruelty of war, Zhang He clinches his victory. He stands before his men to give an inspirational victory speech. They stand attentive and proud. Zhang makes the big announcement and then follows up with "Now, everyone, show your joy. Not with your blade. But with a dance!" Swords go shooting through the air as the men erupt into a perfectly choreographed dance number, backed by the most horrible song you've ever heard. I'm honestly surprised they didn't start stuffing dollars in his pants after a few seconds.

"Um ... sir? Some of the men are starting to question your insistence upon our new uniforms."

#1. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon Is an Animated Nightmare

At one point in the early 1990s, Philips had a deal with Nintendo to add a CD drive to the console. Nintendo backed out, but the part of the deal that stuck was that Philips would have rights to three Zelda games for their own console called the CD-i. That's about as far as Nintendo took it. They were barely involved at all, and they basically pretended that the games didn't exist when they did come out.

Eh, it just looks like a normal game. What's so bad about that?

As a game, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon was actually praised pretty highly, even though it was just a basic side scroller. That's because at the time, nobody else had put out a game with CD-quality sound and full animation. But after a few years had gone by and the technology made a huge leap forward, people were able to look past the novelty and take a good hard stare at the content. And what they saw was horrifying.

The WTF Ending

Holy mother of Christ, what the fuck did we just see there? Which one of you dirty sonsabitches provoked Satan with a dare?

OK, let's calm down and take this step by step. First, let's just get it out of the way right now that these animations were obviously drawn by one of the producers' children by clinching crayons between their ass cheeks:

"Daddy, is this good? Daddy? Are you awake? Why do you smell like 'grown-up juice' again?"

But even if you can look past that, the conversation sounds like a party game where everyone writes down a sentence, puts it into a hat, and then pulls them out one at a time to make a wacky story. After catching a traitor who tried to murder all the citizens of Hyrule, the king punishes him by making him clean everyone's floors. For attempted genocide.

Then, after a life-risking battle, a goofy-eyed, stupidly smiling Zelda(?) asks another woman, "I wonder what happened to Link?" To which she replies, "Oh, he was a bore, anyway." Then, out of nowhere, Zelda (I'm just going to assume that she's Zelda -- who cares at this point) grabs a mirror out of the second woman's hand, says, "Stop looking at yourself," and flings the mirror across the room ... still with that stupid smile on her face the whole time. The mirror then explodes in midair:

Good thing she threw it when she did. Otherwise, it would have gone off in that woman's hands.

Suddenly, Link is released from the broken mirror! And nobody acts even remotely surprised by this. He just turns around and waves as if that's the way he planned on entering the room. And they go along with it as if he just does this all the time.

He asks, "What happened?" And Zelda says, "Nothing, Link. We were just about to have a feast." And then the most maniacal, mind-twisting laughter erupts for no reason at all, leaving you questioning everything you ever believed about human creativity and our purpose on this plane of existence.

Gaze long into the maw of madness and breathe deep of its putrid breath.

And then that's it. It's over. And you're left sitting alone in front of your computer, wondering how long you've been weeping and if you'll ever truly be able to enjoy the presence of another human again. Because you know that a group of people had something horrible inside of them that made the ending to this game. And if that terrible wickedness existed in those people, then maybe it could exist inside someone you love and trust. And you just don't know if that's a risk you can afford to take. I ... I'm still not sure, myself.